


Testing

by orphan_account



Category: Rockman.EXE | Mega Man Battle Network
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Blood and Gore, M/M, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 02:27:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2092242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Regal tries to get information out of Yuichiro, but eventually decides to just abuse him.</p>
<p>NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testing

Most of the scientists at SciLab often worked late into the night, and Yuichiro Hikari was no exception. He sat at his desk, hunched over the lines of code scrolling up on his computer screen, his long fingers occasionally pressing the keys to edit the lines in some way. His brown eyes were drawn to the screen, the only source of light in the room - he worked better when the harsh glow of the computer was his only light - as he analyzed each line over and over.

_It’s 3 AM!_ , the clock on the wall chimed. Yuichiro ignored it, his focus entirely on his research. “I see... So this is how it was programmed...” He murmured softly under his breath, his fingers pausing in mid-air, hovering over the keys, as he collected his thoughts, closing his eyes to concentrate.

An arm suddenly snaked around his neck, forcing him back against the chair. Yuichiro gasped and choked, attempting to pull the arm down from his neck. A needle pressed into his cheek as something flowed into him. “You’ve been working too hard again, Dr. Hikari...”

“Regal...?!” The menace in Yuichiro’s voice was underneath a thick stupor, the syllables slurring together into a barely recognizable growl. Numbness raced through his whole body. The room, the world spun around the scientist until his eyes closed.

\--

When Yuichiro awoke, he found himself in a pure white room. There was no horizon to make out, nor could he tell where the walls ended and the floor began. He went to adjust his glasses, but found that they were not on his face. “What...” Realization dawned on him. He leapt to his feet, scanning the blurry room for any sign of escape, clue as to where he was, _anything._

A soft breath on his neck made him freeze in mid-action. “Ahh... so you’re awake.” Regal seemed to appear instantly behind the scientist, the hint of a smile upon his lips. “I was getting rather worried. You truly do devote yourself to your work, Doctor Hikari...”

“What do you want, Regal?” Yuichiro drew back from the menacing presence before him. “I thought-”

“Those matters are of little importance to you.” Reaching out, Regal touched the other scientist’s chin, stroking it with his thumb slowly. “You’re a smart man; Do you think you’re in a good position to demand that from me?”

Silence.

“I knew you wouldn’t agree to what I want of you at the start.” The brown haired scientist noticed Regal throw a bag down onto the floor. A stack of papers, books, pencils, folders - products rendered near obsolete by CyberNet - scattered. “However, we at Nebula pride ourselves on being able to get whatever is good for us... So tell me, Yuichiro. When’s the last time you’ve seen your son?”

_Lan? Why would he ask about Lan? What does that have to do with...?_ “It’s been a while...” Yuichiro admitted slowly, returning his gaze to Regal.

“I didn’t ask for something as vague as that!” Regal’s grip on the other scientist’s chin tightened, his nails digging into the soft skin below his chin until small drops of blood trailed down his fingers. He stepped closer, his eye glaring as Yuichiro attempted to push away Regal’s hand. “You know that we demand _specifics_ as scientists. So tell me... When was the last time you saw Lan Hikari?”

“L-last week!” He gasped out, staggering backwards as Regal let go. He rubbed the underside of his chin, glaring back at his captor. He stared at Regal, attempting to discern what his next move was. 

Reaching into his pocket, Regal pulled out a remote, and with the press of a button a TV appeared from the wall behind him. With another button press, it flickered to life, showing a picture of-

“Lan!!” Yuichiro ran towards the screen, gazing up at it, barely comprehending that he was seeing his son, bruised and chained against a slab of concrete, his brown eyes wide and tears streaking down his cheeks. “Lan!”

“Dad, please help me!!” Lan responded, kicking against the chains before a masked man shoved him back against the wall. “Dad- Aagh!” The man punched the child, shutting him up with the exception of a whimper. 

Yuichiro shot a dark glare at Regal, who chuckled and walked away, ignoring the scientist’s sudden verbal curses. “If you want to save your son, I have to ask you to do something for me. You’ve heard of Zeno’s Paradoxes, yes?”

Pausing, he nodded slowly.

“Of course you have. I’m attempting to devise a new program, but I am currently running into an... issue, you would say. All I need from you is to solve Zeno’s Motion Paradox. You know the one.”

Yuichiro took his gaze off of his son and turned his full attention to Regal. He stared, his gaze unwavering. 

“Those books, papers, folders I gave you - They’ll all on the subject of the paradox. It’s quite extensive, true. However, I am a busy man, and I need this done for me as soon as possible. As such, you have 5 minutes to prove the paradox.”

He disappeared. Yuichiro wasted no time in picking up a piece of paper and a pencil, writing out the definition of the paradox. “A paradox, by default is something drawn from sound premises leading to something illogical...” He murmured, opening a book and flicking through the pages.

Instead of words about paradoxes, there were words on romance, words on love. Yuichiro furrowed his brow and skimmed further, seeing not valuable information, but rather the mad ramblings of a girl in love. He tossed the book aside and picked up a folder. “Oh, and one more thing...”

Regal appeared in front of the book. Picking it up, he handed it back to the stressed scientist. “All of what you see is valuable, even if at first glance it is not. I can tell you truthfully that there is an opinion of this very paradox on one of the pages in that book. You have 4 minutes left, Doctor Hikari.”

He left as quickly as he came. Yuichiro ignored the book again, instead devoting his analytic gaze to a collection of papers. “This is just information on other paradoxes...” He murmured. “Regal! A paradox such as this cannot be proven, as it ignores simple logic!”

“Oh come now...” Regal didn’t bother to appear, instead speaking as if he was the air itself, surrounding, enveloping the other scientist. “You know better than to attempt to deflect this.” He seemed to spit out the words. “You don’t have much time left. I suggest you stop talking to me and focus on saving your son.”

Yuichiro shivered. Regal’s voice, calm as it may have been, was like ice. He wrote out equations, poured over the tomes before him as quickly as he could, all while attempting, vainly, to ignore his son’s loud begging. “Dad, please help me!”

“I’m doing my best!” Yuichiro snapped back. He took a deep breath, the breath shaking as much as he was. His scrawling words became more shaken, impossible to read at the seconds ticked on. He felt something seep into his thoughts, something both impossibly hot and ice cold at the same time, something that poisoned every single thought he had, something that prevented clear thought and turned his analysis into nonsensical conjecture. 

The seconds ticked onward in his mind. He heard his son pleading, his voice wavering with each word; he saw the words written on paper swim all around until they became nonsensical ramblings; he felt the pressure in his mind press down on him harder and harder as the numbers ticked down, his son yelled for him, swimming together into a cacophony of nonsense.

Cursing under his breath, he quickly picked up some of the folders and poured through them. _Nonsense..._ He tossed them aside, the papers scattering all over the floor. He picked up the same tome he threw aside a few minutes ago and scanned it, much more thoroughly. “Nothing in here is helpful... Nothing, nothing, nothing...” He wiped the sweat off of his eyebrow as he flipped the pages. “Unless you ignore the laws of logic, there is nothing that can prove this paradox...”

“I see.” Regal appeared once more, a smile on his face. “But you’re forgetting something very critical, Doctor Hikari... And here I thought you were the most intelligent mind short of your father.”

Yuichiro’s heart dropped. “You’re forgetting a critical rule of Calculus. Infinite geometric series can converge, ergo... the infinite number of "half-steps" needed is balanced by the increasingly short amount of time needed to traverse the distances. In short, it is provable without sacrificing the basic laws of logic. I thought you would have known that...”

“What about my son?” Yuichiro challenged, his voice as steady as he could possibly keep it. Regal merely gestured to the monitor. 

“Dad...?” Lan’s voice was hoarse. His eyes were tired, he hung limp from the chains. He shook his head as the masked man from before approached the child, holding something behind his back.

Lan’s voice was silenced by steel and red. The man, in one movement, took the knife from behind his back and sliced the child’s throat. Crimson flowed down the boy’s neck onto his jacket as the masked man continued cutting apart Lan, more blood staining his limp body, blood and flesh falling to the floor.

The pencil Yuichiro was holding dropped to the floor. He felt a dull jolt throughout his body as he fell to his knees, hands limp at his side, eyes wide, refusing to process what just happened to his son. “Y-you...”

He shook with the tremors of anger and the sting of ineptitude. Despite all of his intelligence, he overlooked one slight matter, and due to that mistake, that mistake he made... He looked up at Regal, standing stonily still, and felt anger well up inside. His body refused to listen to the swelling, animalistic anger, so all he did was kneel in front of the TV, eyes wide.

“Even though you were useless to me as a scientist...” Regal mused, speaking aloud for the first time after Lan’s death, “You would be useful as a test subject.”

"I see you’re confused...” Regal stated, watching the scientist’s shock slowly wear off as the TV blipped off. “Let me explain. There is a way to transport human data to the CyberNet. However, I have not tested it yet, and I am loathe to use one of my highly devoted men. You, on the other hand..." A smile finally graced Regal's face, his eye narrowing as he stared down at the shaking scientist. "Why not atone for your ignorant mistake?"

"I don't... you monster..." Words escaped him just as quickly, as suddenly, as they came. Yuichiro clenched his fists, looking at the floor. His child's face, just before he died, burned itself into his eyes. Every time he blinked, he saw the same scene replaying itself over and over and over, his failure stabbing his heart with each blink. 

It was his fault, all his fault that his son, his pride and joy, was dead. He made a childish mistake and now his son was dead. Tears fell down his cheeks once more, his body shaking with sobs. 

“You can’t... please...” He promised himself that he would never kneel to evil, that he would stand strong in the face of the vile criminals stalking the world. He promise himself he would never beg. And yet here he was, on his knees, failure stinging throughout his whole body, mumbling excuses and pleas.

"You still act as if you have a choice in the matter." Regal's words, sharper than normal, sliced through Yuichiro's thoughts as he reached into his coat, pulling out a small remote. Pointing it at the sobbing scientist, he pressed a button, watching the scientist dissolve into light blue data before disappearing entirely.

\--

He blinked. He stood not in a pristine white room, but in a maze of wires, colored material of... some kind glowing beneath him, light pulsing through the material at regular intervals. Every step he took made the floor glow beneath his shoes. “CyberNet...” Yuichiro murmured. He shook his head, his body still shaking. “If only Lan was-”

A jolt of electricity erased his thoughts and coursed rapidly through his body. With a cry, he stumbled into a data block that rose suddenly. Using the data for support, he turned around to find some sort of virus staring at him. He shook his head, leaning against the block, panting ever so slightly as the tiny creature inched closer and closer, before leaping out at him.

“You see why I wanted to save this for useless peons...” Regal taunted, his voice filling the room as Yuichiro ran from the creature. Data blocks rose out from the ground, walling off the scientist, upsetting his footing, making him fall.

Wasting no time, Yuichiro pushed himself up, biting his lip as the virus chasing him sent electric jolts at his feet. “I figured someone like yourself would be more useful in programming my device, but after witnessing your failure... Such a shame.”

“That’s not-!” Another virus appeared in front of Yuichiro, this one much larger. It punched his cheek, a loud thud accompanying the gasp from the scientist. 

“Oh? While you were busy pretending to better society, you had no idea where your son was, didn’t you? You willingly sent him to his near death to take down Gospel, for instance...” The voice was pure cold. It seeped through Yuichiro’s skin, stabbing at his soul as viruses surrounded him.

“Leave my son out of this!” Yuichiro gasped out, backing away as the newly formed collection of viruses surrounded him by a black wall. “You had no right to do that to him!!” His voice trembled. 

“Let me finish, Doctor Hikari... As I was saying, you let your son nearly die of radiation poisoning just to take down Gospel... You have no idea where he is at any time, do you? He threw himself into danger more times than I can even think of, and yet you never knew until he told you.”

A virus plunged its sword into the scientist’s body. It slid through the layers of flesh, the impossibly sharp edges cutting through nerves, veins, anything in its way, flooding Yuichiro’s brain with icy agony. He let out a loud scream that echoed throughout CyberNet as the virus twisted the sword, blood dripping down his clothes.

“You rarely took time off to even see your son, either. When was the last time you saw your son that wasn’t related to the end of the world, mm? I bet you can’t even remember. Frankly, I’m shocked that his death affected you that much. He was just a stranger to you, wasn’t he?”

“That’s wrong...!” Pained whimpers choked Yuichiro’s protests.

“ _You know I’m right._ ” Regal’s voice was incredibly level and calm, to the point of sheer monotony. He spoke slowly, evenly, nearly robotically, while watching Yuichiro suffer through the viruses’ assault. He lectured the other scientist at length, and if he received any joy from watching Yuichiro get beaten, he never revealed it.

The brown haired man finally collapsed, tears in his eyes, streaming down his bruised face, blood coating his work clothes, his body shivering. His vision fading, his voice reduced to throaty whimpers, the great scientist curled up and let his eyes close into inky darkness as the viruses dispersed as quickly as they came. “You were a perfect subject...” Regal gloated, pressing a button on his remote.

\--

The brown haired man still lay there on the floor, twitching and whimpering as if he was still struggling against the viruses, blood seeping through his clothes and staining the white floor. He coughed, spit and blood dripping down onto the floor, pooling by his cheek.

“Marvelous!” Regal smiled, kneeling down and picking up the scientist, cradling him close to his chest.

“I figured you would have much more to say... You should be glad, you know. This way, my paradise for evil can flourish!” A quiet laugh from Regal was the only sound in the room. “Though, I must say, you’re quite unresponsive...” He checked to see if Yuichiro was still breathing; he was, though it was faint, ragged, uneven. “This can be fixed...”

Yuichiro looked down, opening his eyes for the first time, seeing a shaky, blurry hand trail down his bloodied clothes, long fingers circling around the buckle on his pants before undoing them. The sharp _zzzip_ sound jolted back what little was left of his broken brain. Whimpered pleas tumbled out of his sore throat.

Regal reached inside the scientist’s pants, pausing just as he gripped onto the waistband of Yuichiro’s boxers. He furrowed his brow, as if listening to something of grave importance, before standing up, letting Yuichiro fall to the ground. “Unfortunately, I have more important matters to attend to. Maybe next time I’ll show you how blissful a world of evil is...” 

He left the room in the blink of an eye. Yuichiro shivered, his mind both reeling with confused emotions and steady with nothingness. After what felt like an eternity of constant suffering, he closed his eyes once more, falling into a dark abyss of nothing as the door opened and a small child ran into the room, shouting “Dad!”

**Author's Note:**

> No, Yuichiro isn't dead, and Lan is actually alive. Maybe there'll be a recovery fic after this, IDK.
> 
> Also, Regal can probably teleport if he's got this kind of technology. I like teleporting Regal. Did I ever tell you my headcanon for him is that he's essentially Zhuge Liang? I try to keep that out of my writing but sometimes it seeps through.


End file.
